NOTE: This feature is available in the Standard, Professional, and Enterprise versions of both Spectra and myStratus Desktop.

Rendering is the process where Spectra/Stratus Desktop builds new images from the changes you’ve made to the images in the software. You may render session images for proofing or preview purposes – such as printing proofs or loading images up to a website – or you may render images from an order for in-house printing, sending to a lab, or electronic delivery. If you print some or all of your work in-house, take a look at Printing Workflow Overview to see how rendering fits in to that process.

ATTENTION! If you use Spectra/myStratus Desktop to render images, don't crop the images in your image editing software or your capture software. The preview images in Spectra and myStratus Desktop reference a full-frame image. Once you set the crop in Digital Workflow, that crop will be referenced when rendering images. If you crop the hi-res, raw, or retouched files, your images will not be rendered properly.

Rendering Images

Before you can render images, you'll need to set up your render profile(s). See Render Profiles for more information. Once you've created one or more render profiles, follow these steps to render images for a session, invoice, or production order:

1. Select a session on the Workflow hub and click Render Proofs or Render/Print.  Note: You can only choose proofing profiles when rendering from a session. To render images for final output, open an invoice or production order and click Render/Print Ordered Images on the Action tab of the ribbon.

2. Check the profiles you want to run.
   
   

3. At this time you can change the image selection by opening the images drop-down list and choosing one of the options. OR, for Final Output Profiles you can either select All or Prompt which will prompt you for each line item from the order. You can also override the grouping selection and choose a specific image group to render.
   
   

4. Click Start Rendering. While rendering, you may see a status bar showing the progress of each profile. A green check mark indicates the rendering is complete.

   HERE'S A FLASH FOR YOU! To make your rendering even more powerful, install our 64-bit rendering engine. This engine utilizes more RAM on the PC and can help prevent "Out of Memory" Errors that may occur during rendering. This engine can be installed from within Spectra/myStratus at Maintenance > Preferences > Workstation Preferences > Digital tab > Install 64-bit Rendering Engine. Note: This engine cannot be installed on 32-bit computer and is not available for Spectra Access Databases. See also: Workstation Preferences - Digital

   
   

    

5. After rendering, you can view the images in the session's render folder or an alternate location as specified in the output options of the render profile.